


They Click Upon Themselves

by noxelementalist



Category: Here on Earth
Genre: Diners, First Time, M/M, Pre-Slash, Relationship Negotiation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-05
Updated: 2019-05-05
Packaged: 2020-06-27 07:58:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19786612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noxelementalist/pseuds/noxelementalist
Summary: This was the problem with being set up by the love of your life from beyond the grave, Jasper thought as he pondered the question. You couldn’t haul her in and ask her what she was thinking, but you couldn’t say her taste was off.





	They Click Upon Themselves

**Author's Note:**

> Written because I can? It’s a pairing that intrigues me, and I doubt anyone’s ever going to prompt for it. Title taken from Robert Frost’s [Birches](https://www.bartleby.com/104/66.html), which fans of the movie will recognize as Sam’s favorite poem.

Putnam, Connecticut was the kind of town that teenagers in America longed to leave and adults loved. It was large enough for concerts, fairs, art shows, and good coffee at cheap prices, but small enough that you could stay up late without consequences, drive around without hitting traffic, and know your entire high school class for at least ten years. There were hazy, golden summers and colorful New England falls, with an appropriately white winter in between.

Putnam was, in short, idyllic. Practically every passerby left it feeling good about their lives.

_The plan had been I follow Sam, she graduates, we get married, I get a job, she gets a life, and we live on_ , Jasper thought as he wiped down the counter at Mable’s Table that morning. _But instead Sam died, I stayed, and now I’m working for her mom. My life is officially a damn WB episode._

And it was. Sam’s death had in fact meant Jasper’s entire life had turned into a sad, cautionary tale story of an average, all-American boy who was born, raised, and would probably die in the same place. Jasper would live out his life wiping counters at the diner he’d basically grown up in while staring at its Lover’s Wall where- no matter how much he glared- Sam’s name continued to shine right next to the name of the guy she…with Sam’s name and _not-his_ name, etched there for all to see.

Jasper _hated_ it. He’d gotten stuck with Sam’s life but not with her, and there was no way of denying how duller life was without her in it. Oh, he’d tried to put on a good face when he went out with the friends he still had in town: Flint was working on the Rubble family farm, Craig had joined the police academy, and Piers was living at home and driving into Danielson for community college. They all got together once a week at the end of the week, just like they had ever since they could drive, shooting drinks and telling tales. Every once in a while Jasper would watch one of them make a half-hearted pass at a girl they all pretended hadn’t already made clear what their chances were.

Everyone in Putnam knew Flint was going to marry Pearl, that Craig was waiting to see what police force would take him before asking Gemma to marry him, and Piers and Jade were gunning for a spring wedding in a year or two. _Everyone_ had known that for the last five years. Jasper was the only one that was single— only Jasper that all the girls in town looked at with sad eyes, thinking it was so _romantic_ that he was still grieving the girl who had left him behind and how much of a _shame_ it was he’d have his heart broken.

Jasper had wanted to yell at them so many times that grief wasn’t romantic. Watching the girl you were gonna marry die slowly from osteosarcoma in a big city hospital, knowing you weren’t enough for her in the end, wasn’t _romantic_. Knowing you were gonna be known as “the guy who lost his girl to cancer and a guy from Rallston” for the rest of your life wasn’t _romantic_. It was tragic, and brutal, and if his momma hadn’t raised him right would’ve led Jasper to taking a _knife_ to the Lover’s Wall and causing even _more_ property damage than that car crash had last June when it burned the whole building down.

Jasper sighed. _Guess it’s going to be one of those days where I’m gonna be missing you Sam,_ he thought bitterly to himself as he stepped back from the counter, barely noticing the door jingle as he ducked under it to throw the rag into a small bucket on the floor under the cashbox to rinse out later. _Like I never I am._

“Hey farm boy,” a voice said quietly.

Jasper froze.

“Richie,” he replied as he stood up, taking in the young man standing on the other side of the counter. He was still as tall as Jasper remembered- barely an inch shorter than him- and seemed just as confident, with the same warm, brown eyes that seemed to watch everything under carefully side-swept bangs, the kind Jasper had never quite gotten his own to hang down in.

But Kelley was wearing jeans, not khakis, and a tan t-shirt with Johnny Bravo saying “Whoa Momma” on it instead of the long-sleeve Jasper always remembered him in even though Kelley’d been less dressed when they had been hauling lumber around. Kelley was looking at Jasper like he was seeing something right.

_That_ also had definitely never happened last summer.

“Do I pass inspection?” Kelley asked at last.

_Kelley looks…good_ , Jasper thought to himself. “Yeah, this time,” he said aloud.

“You all still do ice cream here?” Kelley asked as he slowly sat down right across from Jasper at the counter, the seat under him creaking slightly.

“Still handmade with the Cavanaugh family recipe.”

“Any chance of a soft-serve? Maybe strawberry?”

“You want ice cream at ten in the morning?”

“No time like the present, right?”

Jasper smirked. “Amen to that.”

“Didn’t take you for a church boy after that one sermon back in June,” Kelley said as Jasper walked into the back.

“Mom made me go to that, but I’m all adult and graduated now,” he said loudly as he opened the freezer, reaching in to grab a large tub of strawberry ice cream. “My choice if I want to go, and trust me, I wouldn’t be here instead of at the Labor Day service if I was interested. And you?”

“Me?”

“You a church boy?”

“I live in _New Jersey_.”

Jasper laughed, absentmindedly scooping ice cream into a waffle cone he’d grabbed from a nearby rack with the practice that had come from months of sneaking in with Sam for midnight snacks under her mom’s nose. “Right,” Jasper said. “New Jersey, the godless, heathen state of the Mid-Atlantic.”

“Calvinists.”

“Seriously?”

Jasper could almost feel Kelley shaking as he laughed. “I know, I wound up at a university founded by _Calvinist Presbyterians_ ,” the young man was saying as Jasper walked back to the front. “My Irish Catholic ancestors are probably rolling in their graves.”

“Probably got better reasons to do it than that,” Jasper said as he handed Kelley the ice cream.

“For sure,” Kelley confirmed before glancing at his hand. “A Waffle cone?”

“You want something smaller?”

Kelley smiled. It was a small, shy thing that made Jasper wonder just _how_ comfortable the other man was really. “No. Just…wasn’t expecting to get the larger portion.”

“Well surprise,” Jasper replied, leaning onto the counter. “I’m only a jaded, bitter ex-boyfriend inside a hospital.”

“Mm,” Kelley hummed as he started to lick at the ice cream. “And I’m only a cynical, snobby, preppie on probation on a worksite.”

“You mean I might _actually_ get to know you? Richie, are we going to talk _feelings_?”

“You bet farm boy.”

“S-he’d have liked that.”

Jasper watched as Kelley glanced at the Lover’s Wall. “She would’ve,” Kelley said slowly, pausing in eating to look Jasper in the eyes. “Know what else she would’ve liked?”

“Running. Being at BU. Me. You. I dunno, a thousand things. What’d you have in mind?”

“She- here, take this, and give me that,” Kelley said, holding his ice cream out to Jasper with one hand while gesturing with the other towards the cashbox, where the marker Jo Cavanaugh used to mark receipts rested.

“Why?” Jasper asked as he took the ice cream.

“Just- hand me the pen man.”

“Kelley—“

“Jasper, I don’t have the weekend to rebuild this diner _again_ , and my car’s parked safely over at the service station. _Give me the pen_.”

“…fine.”

“Sam would’ve loved this,” Kelley said, and Jasper watched as Kelley got up, walked over to the Lover’s Wall.

_What is Richie doing,_ he thought numbly, watching as Kelley wrote Jasper’s name in broad, clean strokes next to his before by drawing a huge heart around their and Sam’s names on the wall.

“Well, what do you think?” Kelley asked.

“You know,” Jasper said aloud after a moment, feeling suddenly grateful for Mable’s being completely empty for once. “A man could take that as a…different kind of declaration.”

“A man could if he wanted.”

“Are you making that declaration?”

“Not sure,” Kelley admitted as he sat back down at the counter, reaching out to grab the ice cream cone from Jasper while Jasper continued to stare at his newly written name on the wall. “Would you be open to that kinda of declaration? From me?”

For a moment the pair was silent, Kelley licking calmly at his strawberry soft serve. As the minutes ticked by Jasper grew painfully aware that somebody, somewhere in the world, was having what Sam would’ve called a “serious fit.”

It was probably him, if Jasper was being honest with himself.

“I’m thinking,” Kelley said eventually, “that you might be.”

“… _what._ I- how-”

“I’m not hearing a No.”

Jasper stared at Kelley. “Seriously?!” Jasper shouted. “ _Seriously?!_ ”

“We’re both leaders, and we’re both outsiders,” Kelley said before actually taking a bite out of the waffle cone itself. “We’re loyal to our friends. We put up with _way_ more than we should from our family. We’re both good-looking—”

“—we drive each _other up the wall_ —”

“—and we’re the only two people Samantha Cavanaugh ever thought was with her time, let alone worth becoming close with, and probably the only two men she ever told to make nice with each other,” Kelley continued. “It’s not _that_ crazy, and I’m pretty sure we’d make great boyfriends. I know you would at least.”

“But I’ve- I’ve _never-_ “

“…Never?”

“Never- you know,” Jasper said, gesturing helplessly at the other man.

_“_ You- r _eally?_ ” Kelley laughed. _“_ Man, I was joking about the cows, but I didn’t know Putties were _that_ , oh, what’s the word I’m looking for…”

“Are _Rallston_ boys?” Jasper asked, feeling himself calm down slightly now that they were on back to the ground he and Kelley had spent most of summer on.

“We’re an all-male, private boarding school.”

“That doesn’t mean everyone—”

“Doesn’t mean nobody either,” Kelley said back smugly. “And in case you missed it, I am a goddamn _catch_.”

“Great, that’s- that is- that is not how I expected this day to go,” Jasper said, rubbing one hand across the back of his neck idly, the motion nudging his green John Deere baseball cap slightly forward.

“...What _were_ you expecting?”

“A quiet morning before the lunch rush, not getting propositioned by the _…_ soulmate, or whatever of the _dead love of my life_.”

“Okay, let me ask you this,” Kelley said, finishing off the ice cream cone with one final, crunchy bite. “Imagine, if you can, that I was a Kelly without the E, or you were a Jasmine instead of a Jasper. Would there be _anything_ that would stop us from dating or, yes, having sex?”

This was the problem with being set up by the love of your life from beyond the grave, Jasper reflected as he pondered the question. You couldn’t haul her in and ask her what she was thinking, but you couldn’t say her taste was off. Even if it was the exact kind of thing Sam wouldn’t have been planning on.

At least, Jasper thought Sam wouldn’t have planned for this. As he found out at her funeral, Sam had done a _lot_ ahead of time to lessen the blow for everyone in town by making sure to leave all her things to the people who’d want them the most. It…was _technically_ possible she’d fall in love with a guy and think of passing him off on her best friend.

“No,” Jasper said carefully, slowly removing the apron he was forced to wear on the job and hanging it a peg behind the counter with the ease the last few months of practice had brought. “I can’t say there would be.”

“Then what’s the problem now?”

“First, I live here, you’re in _Jersey.”_

“There are these things called cars you know. Some of them are even big enough we’d call them buses. You could visit, stay overnight. My roommate wouldn’t mind.”

“He wouldn’t mind a- _your_ boyfriend staying over?”

“Kirk would love an excuse to stay with _his.”_

“And that brings us to the other sticking point,” Jasper told him. “I’m a _Jasper_. You’re a Kelley _with_ an E.”

“That’s not a problem for me.”

“Kinda is for me.”

“…is it?” Kelley asked, and almost for the first time in since they’d met last spring Jasper thought the other man actually sounded unsure. “You mean, like, you don’t approve or—”

“No, I- I mean, I don’t- It’s not a problem like that!” Jasper said gruffly, suddenly feeling irritated with the whole conversation. “I mean, alright, let’s just- lay our cards out here, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Yeah, I know you’re a catch—”

“Why, _thank_ you—”

“And _I’m_ a catch. And yeah, there…there were days there, near the end, with Sam, when I wondered what you must’ve been like to be what she needed, if it’s something I- I could’ve been.”

“Or needed.”

“Or needed,” Jasper admitted. “And yeah, I won’t lie, if Sam was still here? If she was _physically_ here, telling me right now that she wanted to date us both? I- I honestly might’ve considered that, for all the _crazy_ ribbing and looks I’d get once the news of it broke down here, because when you were with her you were vaguely passable and I bet, eventually, we’d figure out how to love her together.”

“But Sam’s dead,” Jasper continued. “And the only side of you I’ve ever gotten is the drunk, _jackass_ rich-boy side of you, and that is not appealing to me really ever, let alone appealing enough to consider maybe trying out a relationship I have _never_ been interested in having before.”

“That’s fair.”

“Not to mention this is an out-of-the-blue pass. I mean, seriously man, who _does_ this?”

“I dunno, my last one worked out pretty well,” Kelley said, thumbing at the wall.

“ _And_ _that just makes this more awkward_.”

Kelley stared at him. “Cards on the table?” he said after a moment.

“Cards on the table.”

“Fine. Mind letting me back there first?” Kelley asked, pointing towards the kitchen.

Jasper wordlessly went and opened the small door that separated the kitchen from Martha’s Table proper, watching as Kelley walked through it to a small portion in the back and—

“Dude, what the—”

“I don’t have an apron to pull off all dramatically,” Kelley replied as he pulled his t-shirt off, revealing to Jasper the broad chest with notable pecs Jasper had seen sweaty and tanned all summer long when they’d worked next to each other on repairing Mable’s. “And figured me shirtless in the front might cause talk.”

“You got that right,” Jasper said, his eyes flicking over the other man’s profile as Kelley turned around, almost missing Kelley dropping his shirt on the ground when it dawned on Jasper that if they did this— if Jasper… tried out a relationship with this guy— one with any kind of physical element in it at all? That chest was going to be a _way_ more prominent feature in his life than it had been to date.

“So, here are my cards, on the table,” Kelley said. “Being away from here, from Rallston, from my folks and all, it- it gave me the space and time I needed to think about things. To think about why I… I do what I do. Who I am, when I am. It gave me time to think about here, about Sam. About you.”

“Me?”

“You,” Kelley confirmed. “Cause the thing is, yeah, I fell in love with Sam. But I wasn’t _blind_. I saw the way you moved, the way you talked. Saw the way you cared about her, her family. And- well, I couldn’t- _wouldn’t_ have done much about that then, given the circumstances and all.”

“Except?”

“Except I came in here today, and looked up, and saw you in that damn trucker hat and stupid leather cord necklace thing around your neck with an apron around that trim body of yours—”

“Excuse you, _trim?—_ ”

“And all I could think of is how good it would be to have you in my life the way you could’ve been in, I dunno, another life? And if there’s _anything_ this past summer taught me, it’s that if I want something, some _one_ , I better move. So this is me. Moving.”

“That...that is-”

“Some teen sitcom bull?” Kelley said pointedly. “Maybe. But maybe not.”

Jasper sighed. “This is a lot to take in.”

“I know.”

“I mean, I can’t even picture what this would like look.”

“I’d like to think it’d look something like this,” Kelley said as he carefully wrapped his arms around Jasper’s waist, tilting his head up slightly to look Jasper in the eyes. “Only with way more talking and long-distance driving in between the holding parts.”

“We’d fight with each other a lot in there too,” Jasper whispered, not sure what to make of how nervous he felt all of a sudden, standing there in the back of Mable’s in his blue ringer shirt and jeans with a…muscular college freshmen standing shirtless and wrapped around him.

Kelley hummed appreciatively. “Possibly.”

“ _Possibly_?”

“I can be pretty persuasive.”

“I can be pretty stubborn.”

“Then I’ll have to get even more persuasive,” Kelley murmured back. “Don’t know if I’ve got the stamina to wrestle you down every hour of the day.”

Jasper smirked. “I don’t think you’ve got the stamina to do it twice a day.”

“Oh I can do twice,” Kelley said with a soft laugh.

“We’d do this- this holding, driving, talking, fighting thing, for- for how long?”

“Don’t know,” Kelley admitted to Jasper. “I’d like to say for a long time. Long enough to see how our folks would react if I brought you home for Thanksgiving, or you brought me home for Christmas.”

“But?”

“But we’d have to try it first.”

Jasper sighed. “I- I just don’t know,” he said, shutting his eyes as he carefully rested his forehead against Kelley’s. “I meant it when I said before that I never wanted to try out a relationship like this- like any, really. The plan _was_ it’d be me and Sam against the world, and I know everybody else here too well to want _that_ with them.”

“I know it sounds like I’m kidding when I say this, but I swear, I get that,” Kelley said back, a slight pressure along the side of Jasper’s nose the only hint he got of the other man shuffling closer. “And I’m not asking you to decide now. I’ve got a whole week off before I have to go back to Princeton.”

“Pretty long break for start of school,” Jasper said, opening his eyes to look at Kelley and finding him looking back at him.

“Move-in was in August, and classes don’t start until the eleventh. I’m thinking I might see if I can find a place in town, stay for a bit. Not Sam’s, obviously, though I do want to say hi to her folks—”

“Stay with me.”

Jasper watched as Kelley’s faced brightened. “…yeah? Even without a court order?”

Jasper huffed as he nodded slowly, feeling as the tips of their noses brush. “Even without a court order, because if we’re going to- to try this, if I’m gonna _decide_ this, then I want you nearby.”

“Keep me under lockdown?”

“Only if you’re lucky,” Jasper snarked, startling when Kelley tilted his head back and laughed.

“Alright, I’ll stay with you then,” Kelley told him. “You work here. I’ll register for classes and see how much I can get away with without shopping for textbooks. We’ll hang out in the evening.”

“Split the bed at night?”

“I thought I’d take the floor.”

“You’re not getting the floor.”

“It’s _your_ room.”

“ _You’re_ the guest. You’re _not_ getting the floor.”

Kelley rolled his eyes. “ _Fine_ , _you_ get the floor.”

“I’m not taking the floor, it’s _my_ bed.”

“Fine, okay, we split the bed.”

“And we sleep, wake up, and repeat,” Jasper confirmed. “For a whole week?”

“Pretty much.”

“And if I decide yes?”

“Then I promise you, my last morning here is gonna be a whole lot more interesting than a sunrise drive back to Jersey.”

“It better be,” Jasper confirmed.

Kelley nodded, a look of contentment on his face, and Jasper found himself starting to lean into him again, moving his head just slightly to- to do _something_ , right as the door jingled.

“That pastor needs to learn to get to the point,” Jo Cavanaugh called out. “Jasper, you in here?”

“Yeah, be right there!” Jasper called back as he let go of Kelley.

“You’d better get out there,” Kelley whispered as he bent over to pick up his shirt from the ground, the view displaying curves on his body to Jasper in a way that had Jasper swallowing dryly.

“Yeah,” he said hoarsely, turning to head out.

_Well, maybe-maybe this week won’t turn out so badly as all that after all,_ Jasper thought to himself as he went to the front. “Hi Ms. Cavanaugh,”

“Jasper, it’s Jo, please,” Jo said. “Everything okay in the back there?”

“Ah yeah,” he said, hurriedly picking up his apron to tie it back around his waist. “Just…went to give Kelley—”

“ _Kelley_? Kelley like- like _Sam’s_ Kelley?”

“Hi Ms. Cavanaugh,” Kelley said as he walked up, his shirt very much now back on him even if, as Jasper couldn’t help noticing as Jo went over to greet him, Kelley had forgotten to tuck a corner of it in.

The untucked corner made Jasper smile, and for a brief moment, he took in the image of the man who would be his boyfriend, all bashful and shy around the mother of his- _their_ ex-girlfriend.

_Alright Sam, you win_ , Jasper thought to himself. _I’ll- I’ll give him the week._

And for a second, Jasper could’ve sworn the way the diner light was bouncing off the Lover’s Wall had made Sam’s name shimmer.


End file.
